Do you give your zip code to retailers when you buy something? Think twice before you blurt out “90210.”

WPF’s Pam Dixon spoke to Melanie Hicken of CNN Money about data brokers and how our actions and habits define us, and potentially, can shape some of our opportunities — and not always in good ways. Dixon is quoted in two articles that reveal data broker techniques. Hicken’s article, What Type of Consumer are You? Is an excellent look at how data brokers — companies that purchase copious amounts of consumer data and analyze it — categorize people based on their habits. “Consumers are put into a box of activities that can stereotype them financially and otherwise,” said Pam Dixon. “If people are given or not given opportunities based on these data broker-driven stereotypes, that is a problem.”

Dixon also spoke to Melanie Hicken about why it is important to not give your zip code to retailers when they ask you for it — it can and is used to link your purchases to a great deal of other information that may come as big surprise to you. Here’s more on that, What Your Zip Code Reveals About You. Melanie Hicken is a reporter who has been doing original and very good reporting on how data brokers impact the everyday lives of consumers.

To score is human. Ranking individuals by grades and other performance numbers is as old as human society. Consumer scores — numbers given to individuals to describe or predict their characteristics, habits, or predilections — are a modern day numeric shorthand that ranks, separates, sifts, and otherwise categorizes individuals and also predicts their potential future actions. This new report by Pam Dixon and Robert Gellman explores this issue of predictive scores and privacy.

This Jan. 30, 2014 report discusses a new right to restrict disclosure of health information under the updated HIPAA health privacy rule. The new provision called “Pay Out of Pocket,” also called the “Right to Restrict Disclosure” gives patients the right to request that their health care provider not report or disclose their information to their health plans when they pay for medical services in full. Navigating the new right will take effort and planning for patients to utilize effectively. This substance of this report is about the new patient right to restrict disclosure, and how patients can use it to protect health privacy.

This report focuses on government use of commercial data brokers, the implications for that usage, and what needs to be done to address privacy problems. The government must bring itself fully to heel in the area of privacy. If it is going to outsource its data needs to commercial data brokers, it needs to attach the privacy standards it would have been held to if it had collected the data itself. Outsourcing is not an excuse for evading privacy obligations. Report authors: Bob Gellman and Pam Dixon.